Entries in Matthew Bywater
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Tourism Australia’s recent posting of “Big Baz” caused quite a stir with the star roo’s private parts being purposely censored, more in satire than some prudish sentiment . While it has upset a few (the noisy minority) it has spread globally overnight making mainstream news in the UK and USA within 24 hours.

It is interesting to look at why this has been so successful in a viral sense and also while the vast majority don’t make it past Friends & Family. There is 2 ways this can happen

A) Chance - think crazy cats

B) Expert Skill & Understanding

1st option is not a business plan, so we will focus on the 2nd. Most of the time when an organisation ties to create a viral marketing piece it ends up a huge waste of time and can actually cause harm. This is not Tourism Australia’s first success in this area, remember the Best Job In The World campaign? (google it, it still ranks up top).

I spoke to Leo Seaton, Media Relations Manager, Tourism Australia (TA) to find out what makes them so successful.

1) Partnerships - their approach is to support industry through social media sharing and engagement. No medium caters for partnerships like social media as it allows you leverage each others database at little to no cost extra cost. TA works with industry daily who help provide content for the profile. They see themselves more as a curator, while they generate their own content they are also happy to provide platforms that allow other to engage and advocate for them.

2) Know he triggers - “Animals always get the biggest engagement on our FB page, and in our research are, along with nature, are one of Australia's biggest international tourism draws”

3) Look for Dialogue not Monologue - from personal experience I can say that TA are not active in dissemination of information they are one of the best at engagement on social media - these guys get that is it meant to be a conversation.

4) Location - with some many social media choices this is not as easy as it sounds. TA understand that varying demographics utilise different tools so they are very active not just on Facebook but also Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and Google +. In fact they have the largest Facebook Page in Australia and globally are the most popular destination on Facebook, Instagram and G+

5) Help others - by helping others to provide content they end up with feed-back loop where others want to reference TA, increasing their external links and search relevance.

On the campaign itself - with a day or so Featherdale had over 1750 comments and they saw an increase of 730 fans from the post, increase of 11%.

Their sales and marketing director the objective was to generate conversation on their page and also drive new fans back to Featherdale.

She said the post absolutely fits Featherdale's brand values (fun, loves a good laugh etc.) If you look at the comments on the original post they are actually overwhelmingly positive.